


Periwinkle Blue

by wickersnap



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, F/M, Family, Getting Together, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Fix-It, Horcrux Hunting, M/M, film/book remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22310029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickersnap/pseuds/wickersnap
Summary: Ron comes stumbling out of the long grasses, disheveled and beginning to morph back into his own body. Hermione runs to him and collides with his chest, holding him as tightly as she dare.Harry’s still stumbling around in a daze, drenched and dripping, so they reel him in and make him laugh as Hermione tugs the ill-fitting rounded glasses from Ron’s nose.This is the night they fall in love.The night Hermione finds out she’s going to die.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 18
Kudos: 243





	Periwinkle Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thank you for taking interest :D  
> I adore the Deathly Hallows films (especially the soundtrack, god) and so this became a little bit of a mashup.  
> Please enjoy!  
> [tumblr](https://silverxsakura.tumblr.com/)

Hermione is in love with Ron.

She has seen all of the signs before—in Hogwarts, in Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade. Their corridors and alleys sequester away many secrets of many people. Petals, magical petals, are the most commonly found. Ones that will never wilt. 

When Hermione doubles over one night, the night before Bill and Fleur’s wedding, she knows exactly what is happening. Ginny stares in disbelief and horror at the small cluster of petals from red carnations and delicate white lilies that fall into Hermione’s hands.

 _They look like Ron,_ Hermione thinks, because she thinks she should. _Pale and fiery and gorgeous and delicate and powerful_. 

She ignores everything her heart screams and locks it away.

This is not the time.

But Hermione knows she is in love with Ron

They go on the run the next evening. Her poorly-judged apparition lands them right in the heart of Shaftesbury, twirling (panicked) out of the way of the 19 to Finsbury Park Station. 

“Hermione,” Harry says breathlessly. He grips her hand so tightly she thinks it might break. On her other side, Ron gasps for breath and looks like he might throw up.

“Sorry,” she whispers. She knows. She _knows._

They go after the locket. They throw off their clothes and hurry into the smart suits of three Ministry employees, hoping beyond hope that this’ll work. Hermione takes a few hairs from each of the stunned people and separates the polyjuice into three. They don’t look at each other when they drink it, feeling all at once that they’re sneaky second-years and completely out of their minds. In a moment of scientific curiosity, Hermione wonders what will happen to the flowers growing inside her lungs. She soon finds out. 

Terrified out of her mind, she stands trembling in front of the grotesque Ministry fountain. Runcorn-Harry steps up beside her and a petal threatens to climb itself up her throat.

Not here, she thinks. _Not here._

If they find her, she _will_ die.

She sends him on a suicide mission. The whole time, Umbridge keeps the locket on her person, and Hermione, while cool on the outside, is seconds away from a complete breakdown. The woman in front of them is innocent, she knows it. Umbridge knows it too, but everyone knows what she’s like. The tiny kitten on her desk makes Hermione feel sick and she _daren’t_ look up at the dementors for fear of doing something truly heroic and idiotic. The locket rests on the woman’s chest, leaping out starkly from the horrible clashing pinks. Hermione wants to stand up and take it and leg it immediately, and then she’ll _die_ and it’ll all be for nothing.

But Harry turns up at the courtroom door and shoves Reginald-Ron inside with him. Hermione can see Umbridge’s mind ticking even before the skin of Runcorn’s face begins to crawl and disfigure.

They get the locket, but Yaxley grabs her sleeve before they go. She fights him, clawing at anything she can reach before managing to drop him at Grimmauld Place, ( _“No!”_ ), and disappearing off to anywhere. Anywhere but there.

Ron gets splinched, and Hermione’s chest hurts with the piercing of a thousand thorns unfurling. She cries over him and yells at Harry and her hands are covered in blood and he is convulsing beneath them and—

Harry pushes the dittany into her hands and rolls away to hack up his lungs. Hermione droppers it desperately over Ron’s wound and cries to him, calming only when he stops quivering and yelping. She stoppers the bottle and drops it to the forest litter, crawling over to Harry and cradling him to her chest. She cries for him too, then, when she sees the veritable flowerbed of forget-me-nots on Runcorn’s suit.

Ron’s blood is on her hands and she and Harry are dying, but they have a mission to accomplish.

“Muggletum repellum,” she mutters, tracing her wand through the air in a large arc. “Salvia hexia.”

“What are you doing?” Harry asks. She ignores him. Instead, she pauses briefly to flick her wand to summon the tent from her bag. He gets the message.

Ron leaves, and she thinks she might die then and there. 

She collapses to her knees, gasping for breath. Harry comes running, dropping down and holding her close. It eases the pain, slightly, but she knows that they are both hurting anyway. She has less than a year to live, if the books are anything to go by, and Harry… She doesn’t know. And that is what scares her the most.

“How long?” She asks him one night. She has found carnation petals in the corner near the stove, ones that she must have lost before she banished them, and forget-me-nots at the entrance to the tent. Ron hasn’t been around for nearly five weeks.

“Since you brought me to the Burrow,” he replies, picking at a thread on his jumper. It makes sense, but she had thought Ginny loved him too, and she hadn’t had the disease. Hermione decides not to ask any further.

Harry dances with her. They spin and step around the tent, laughing and letting things be just that little bit lighter. She wants to kiss him, then, wants to pull him in and never let go, and for half a moment she thinks he does too.

His hands find her waist and her arms tighten around his neck. His forehead drops to her shoulder. The pain in her chest spikes and eases all at once, and the tears slide down her cheeks messily and noisily. Harry shakes in her arms, and her shirt dampens slowly. She moves her hands to his back, holding him close while she flicks her wand at the lamps and walks them back to his bed. 

They lie there, holding each other and pretending that they’re not crying. Eventually Harry drifts away into much needed sleep, so Hermione takes the watch, sitting up against the metal rails of the bunk. His hair slips through her fingers, feathery and untameable, and she can no longer keep her heart in that little box she fashioned for it. 

Fresh tears spill from her eyes in utter silence. 

Several weeks later, Ron returns. He returns with the sword of Gryffindor in one hand and the broken locket in the other. She picks up the closest thing to her and throws it at him, reaching next for his backpack and hitting him with that too. She keeps it close to herself out of fear, hugging it tightly and storming off to cry.

He is back, and she is ready to break.

He doesn’t seem to understand, but he seems glad to be back too.

Hermione is screaming. She is screaming with all of the breath left in her body, with every millimetre of the jagged pain ripping open her arm. Bellatrix has either found this curse in some illegal record of dark magic or created it herself, because it tears into her like a cruciatus magnified a ten-fold. Draco Malfoy cowers in the corner, and his mother refuses to look at her.

Hermione is almost blind when the pain comes to a halt. She cannot feel anything—not even the icily cold wooden floor at her back or the dripping blood.

When she can open her eyes, she sees two very familiar flowers, whole, on the floor. Bellatrix is watching her with absolute glee, and the blood has dried on her arm. Several more people have entered or moved, so she thinks she may have fainted.

“This is familiar!” Bellatrix shrills, snatching up the lily and holding it to the light.

“Don’t _touch_ them!” Hermione yells, shocked that she has enough of a voice to do so. She sees Draco flinch in her peripherals. _Good,_ she thinks viciously, listening to the shout reverberate around the room.

Bellatrix ignores her, and grins wider still. “This is familiar, _isn’t it, Cissy?_ ”

“Be quiet, Bella.” Narcissa snaps.

“You thought I wouldn’t notice! You thought you were being sneaky!” The madwoman cackles. “I wasn’t _stupid!_ Not like _Lucius!_ ”

“Silence!” Narcissa shouts. Crashing footsteps echo in the wake of it.

“Hermione!” cry Ron and Harry. They sound horrified. She turns her head to look at them, and finds that the floor is covered in a quilt of white and red.

They make it out in one piece, but Dobby is dead.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Hermione sobs as both boys hug her tight. 

“Okay,” says Harry.

“Okay,” says Ron.

She buries her face into their chests. She loves them.

The wizards below them scream and hide from the dragon’s flames. Harry sprints from the vault, clinging to the cup.

“Relashio!” he yells, and the dragon’s cuffs break into pieces.

“Harry!” Hermione shouts. “Harry, what are you doing!?”

“Come on,” he replies, “climb up!”

“You’re mad!” she decides, and they escape Gringotts on the back of a Ukranian ironbelly. It scrabbles at the tiled rooves of Diagon Alley, and panic echoes up to them from the few brave people still around. With a snap of its tail it launches into the air over London, and they are gone.

“Well,” Ron says when they make it back to solid ground, “I don’t know quite how to break it to you mate, but I think they noticed we broke into Gringotts.”

Harry grimaces, but Hermione cracks up. She laughs herself to tears and collapses on the spot.

“We’ve done it now,” she gasps. “We’re going to _die_.”

Harry kneels next to her and puts his arm around her shoulders. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, “we’re going to be all right.”

Ron sits next to them and lets her lean on him.

“I know where the other horcruxes are.”

The flowers in Hermione’s chest bloom and try to force their way up. She swallows them down and cries more, careful not to disturb the pain in her throat.

She will die, because she is too scared to do anything but.

Harry skids around the corner in front of them as the school shudders again. 

_“Ah!”_ he shouts in a flurry of emotion. “Where the _hell_ have you been?!”

“Chamber of Secrets,” says Ron. Hermione struggles not to drop one of the fangs gripped to her chest.

Harry splutters. _“What?”_

“It was Ron’s idea! Isn’t he absolutely brilliant!” she grins. “After you left I said to him, how are we going to get rid of the horcruxes? We still had the cup, too, and then he remembered the basilisk!”

“What the—” 

“We needed something to get rid of the horcruxes,” Ron says. Hermione shows him the fangs they’ve collected.

“How did you get in?!” Harry demands. “Neither of you speak Parseltongue!”

Ron makes that horrible, choking hissing noise again.

“It’s what you said when you opened the locket. And did you know you sleep talk?”

“He was amazing!” Hermione enthuses. “Just, _brilliant!_ ”

“So,” Harry says, struggling to keep up, “So…” 

“So we’re down another horcrux!” Ron tells him, pulling the crumpled cup from his jacket. “Hermione stabbed it; she hadn’t had the pleasure of doing so yet.”

“Genius!” Harry yells, hugging him without disturbing the fangs, but Ron tries to play it down again.

An explosion breaks overhead. Dust crumbles from the ceiling. Someone screams.

Harry talks as he leads them back through the concealed staircase to the Room of Requirement.

They find Ginny there, with Tonks and Augusta Longbottom.

“Ah, it’s Potter,” Mrs Longbottom says with an air of impatience. “You can tell us what’s going on.”

“Is everyone okay?” ask Ginny and Tonks.

“As far as we know,” Harry replies gravely. “Are there any more people in the passageway?”

“I sealed it after I came through,” says Mrs Longbottom. “I thought it unwise to leave the passage open now that Aberforth has left the pub. Where is my grandson?”

“He’s fighting,” Harry says.

“Naturally. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and join him.” She trots off with surprising speed, up and out of the room.

“I thought you were supposed to be with Andromeda and Teddy,” Harry says to Tonks. 

Hermione can feel that she is running out of time. Her throat tickles, and it gets harder and harder to force it down. Ron clears his throat next to her.

“Hang on!” he yelps, once Ginny has left. “We’re forgetting the house-elves!”

Harry and Hermione frown. “You want them to fight?” Harry asks.

“No!” Ron says seriously. “We don’t want any more Dobbys. We can’t order them to fight—”

Hermione’s arms go slack and every single one of the fangs clatter to the floor. She can no longer _not,_ so she wraps her arms desperately around Ron’s neck and kisses him.

To her utter delight, he drops everything he’s holding and lifts her feet from the ground. She grins and laughs into his mouth, and she can feel a great movement in the centre of her chest. 

“Is this really the best time?” she hears Harry ask weakly.

Ron puts her back on the floor and they both erupt with wet, horrible coughs. Once, twice, thrice Hermione heaves. Scratching grates at her throat, but eventually the flower dislodges and drops into her palm. She gazes at the tiny carnation, but quickly shakes herself to look up at Ron. In his hand is a gorgeous bunch of periwinkle forget-me-nots. Hermione stares at it in shock. Before their eyes, the flowers shrivel and turn grey.

“They’re gone,” Ron murmurs. Hermione’s too; she can feel a huge clearing has been made in her lungs. Instead of revelling in it, she becomes all the more aware of the space that is still choked and thorny.

Hermione looks at Harry, bewildered. His eyes are flicking between their hands in horror and guilt, and his hand is pawing at his chest.

“Harry,” she breathes. His gaze snaps to hers in alarm, and he starts to back away.

“I…” he tries to say, but winces in obvious pain.

Ron starts hacking again. The both of them freeze and turn to him. His shoulders only stop shaking after a worryingly long time, and he pulls his hand away to show them a single lily petal.

“Sorry,” he croaks. 

Hermione doesn’t think she’s ever seen anyone _force_ one of them up before, but rather than dwell on it, she runs to Harry, grabbing him tightly. She can feel him trembling, and she knows they’re _all_ running out of time. She places her hands either side of his face and kisses him.

He jerks as if electrocuted, clutching her jacket like a lifeline. Hermione pulls away grinning and Ron steps in immediately, too caught up in the thrill to let Harry catch his breath. This time, Harry throws his hands up into Ron’s hair and holds him closer.

Smiling, Hermione feels the second movement in her chest and turns away to cough up her lilies. When she straightens up, both Ron and Harry also have a handful of flowers. 

“There’s a war going on here,” Harry says, dazed and sheepish and glowing with embarrassment and relief. The carnation and forget-me-nots shrivel up and he drops them.

“That makes it now or never, doesn’t it?” Ron replies. Even so, Hermione nudges them gently.

When they step out of the room, it is instantly clear that the battle is progressing ruthlessly. They see the fighters down below, so close to the foot of the castle.

“Let’s hope he steps on them!” Ron cheers when Grawp ambles past with his gargoyle-club.

“As long as they’re not our lot!” Tonks shouts from beside them. Ginny throws hexes into the groups of black-robed fighters, and Aberforth praises them as he runs past. 

“They’ll be fine! They’re too good fighters!” Harry tries desperately to reassure them.

The trio run to the room’s stretch of wall and start thinking furiously.

_I need the place where everything is hidden!_

Slowly, the wall sinks back and iron branches curl into existence over wood.

There’s fire. There’s so, _so_ much fire. It surrounds them, chokes them, bears down on them mercilessly. A chimera rears up and bares its teeth, taunting them. 

“Here!” Harry yells, snatching up three brooms and pushing them into the hands of Ron and Hermione. She mounts it unsteadily, driven by terror, and kicks off into the air. Ron and Harry are up there, waiting for her, batting away fiery nundu and runespoors. Harry turns this way and that, desperately searching for something.

 _Don’t worry,_ she wants to yell, _the fire will destroy it,_ but he is already off. She and Ron follow as close as they can as they zip towards the door.

Someone screams, and Harry wheels around on a five pence piece.

“If we die for them, Harry, I’m going to kill you!” Ron roars, swooping around to follow. 

Hermione turns in time to see Harry dive for Malfoy’s hand. He’s clinging to a collapsing tower of desks and chairs, painted with fear and scrabbling like a rodent. Ron snatches up the stunned Goyle and Harry finally manages to get Malfoy onto the back of his broom.

“What are you doing?” she hears Malfoy shriek. “Get to the door!”

She hates him, but she wouldn’t wish a death like this on him either. 

They tumble into the corridor, into clean air and cool stone, and the door shuts behind them. Malfoy and Goyle lie gasping on the floor, and Harry holds up the dripping diadem.

“It was the fiendfyre!” Hermione says when the thing shatters and screams.

“What?” Harry asks. She takes a moment to compose herself, kneeling on the shuddering floor.

“Fiendfyre, cursed fire: it’s one of the other ways to destroy a horcrux. I would never, ever have dared to use it it’s so dangerous, how did he—?”

“A horcrux?!” Malfoy wheezes, but they ignore him.

“Must’ve learnt from the Carrows,” Harry snarls.

“Pity he didn’t learn how to stop it,” Ron says. “I’d be sorry he were dead if he hadn’t just tried quite openly to murder us.”

“Harry, this means we only have the snake left, we can—!” 

“Ginny!” Ron cries. “Oh Merlin, where is she?”

“Let’s look for her,” Harry suggests. “We can—”

The castle shakes again, and the unmistakable sounds of duelling fill the corridor. Hermione feels her heart drop through her chest at the thought of Death Eaters inside Hogwarts. Fred and Percy have stepped into view, and the three leap to help them fight.

The hooded figure duelling Percy retreats and trips, letting his hood fall back to reveal a wide forehead, dirty hair and—

“Hello, Minister!” Percy yells, firing off another jinx. Thicknesse drops his wand and claws at his robes. “Fancy meeting you here. Did I mention I’m resigning?”

“You’re joking, Perce!” shouts Fred. The second Death Eater collapses under three stunning spells, one each from Fred, Hermione and Ron. Thicknesse falls and looks a bit like he’s making the transformation from human to sea urchin.

Hermione spots Malfoy trying to get away and runs towards him, but he disappears too quickly from view and her legs are beginning to give way. She leans against the wall and turns back to her family just as—

 _“NO!”_ she wails, flinging out the most powerful shield spell she can bear to conjure. They all go flying backwards as the great chunks of rock and mortar come crashing down. Some of them bounce off the shield, and it wavers.

The whole side of the castle has been blasted inwards. The cracks and screams and crashes from outside ring loudly through the gaping hole. Hermione’s arms and face are cut and bleeding, but she hauls herself up and staggers towards the others, dispelling her cast. Harry is alive, and Percy and Ron groan and stir, throwing off the rubble despite their obvious injury.

“Fred!” she screams, hysterical, _“FRED!”_

Ron and Percy have joined the caterwauling, running to their brother as Harry, bleeding profusely, tries unsuccessfully to re-orient himself.

“Fred,” she hears them muttering as she pushes past to look frantically for a pulse. She finds it just below his jaw, strong and unmistakable. 

“Oh my god!” she breathes, collapsing nearly over him. “He’s alive.”

“Oh Merlin,” Percy whimpers. Ron throws himself down to hug her and Harry, just about with them, drops back to his knees.

“We have to move him,” he mutters. 

A body falls past the open castle wall and several spells come flying through.

“Get down!” someone yells, and it might have been her. When the barrage ends they all move to dig Fred out with frantic fingers. A huge, loping spider appears through the hole in the wall and begins to clamber inside. Taken by surprise, Hermione screams.

“Shit!” Ron and Harry curse, blasting it backwards. It falls with a shriek, but smaller ones are already competing to take its place.

“It brought friends!” she yells, and they heave Fred up and leg it down the corridor to where people running back and forth continuously.

 _“Rookwood!”_ Percy bellows at a robed figure chasing several students, firing off three curses and hitting his target splendidly. The Death Eater is instantly bound in golden chains and ripped from his feet up, up to the ceiling where he dangles upside down. His skin blisters and bursts horrifically.

“I’ll take Fred,” Percy says, disillusioning and levitating Fred carefully. “You lot go! Go! _Run!”_

The three of them run on, ducking into an alcove behind a tapestry to avoid a barrage of knives heading their way. Hermione slashes her wand and they splinter into nothing just inches from the back of a boy in Hufflepuff robes.

“Where’s the snake?” she insists. “We need to find the snake!”  
  


Harry dies.

Harry dies, and both of them feel it. It’s like a dreadful ghost, blooming in her lungs where his lilies once were. She cries out, and Ron holds her to his chest. 

Fred is up and around crying into the arms of all of his siblings with everyone’s relief.

But Harry is dead, and their connection makes it _hurt._

“NO!” McGonagall screams, and the sound is a terrible, _terrible_ thing. They sprint out of the castle doors and stop dead when they see the procession across the courtyard. 

Hermione screams too, barely even aware of it. Somebody with red hair gathers her to their chest and she wants to fight them, she _wants to,_ but the little strength she had has left her, and Arthur is the only father she has left, so she sags into his arms and cries silent tears. The pain in her chest stopped some time ago, but her heart aches more than she has ever known it to before.

The crowd around her clamours and clamours until Voldemort commands them. That alone makes her want to scream louder. Instead, she clings to Arthur while they both quiver with rage and sorrow.

“You see?” Voldemort begins. “Harry Potter is dead! Do you understand, now, deluded ones? He has never been anything but a boy relying on others to sacrifice themselves for him!” 

Arthur tenses as if to charge, and Hermione digs her fingers into his arm.

“He beat you!” Ron yells, and the charm breaks. Hermione cries out with the rest of the fighters, their _friends_.

“Silence!” Voldemort commands again, sending an even more powerful spell over them. “He was killed sneaking out of the castle grounds. _Killed,_ while he was trying to save himself.” 

All of a sudden Neville breaks away and charges towards the horde of Death Eaters. Several others move to join in, but are stopped. He is tripped and disarmed, but not without a struggle.

“And who is this?” Voldemort demands. Bellatrix sticks her unwanted nose in, cackling and jeering. 

“Ah yes, I remember.”

Hermione watches on in sheer dread as the sorting hat is placed on Neville’s head and he is set alight. The screams are one thing, but the sight is another.

In the same moment, a huge furore becomes heard. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, creatures and allies come careening over the hills. Hermione barely pays them attention, sprinting towards Neville and Harry in the distraction of everyone else.

It takes only one clean movement for Neville to escape the curse, and Harry is no longer there. It seems that every eye, then, is drawn to the blade— _the sword!_ —Neville pulls from the hat. He lops off Nagini’s head without hesitation, and Voldemort screams with fury, soundless, into the cacophony.

“WHERE’S ‘ARRY?” comes Hagrid’s booming shouts.

The fight is quickly moved back within the castle walls as all manner of creatures storm the courtyards. Hermione ducks arrows and dodges the stamping feet of giants and throws hexes and jinxes every which way. She goes crashing into Ron and together they manage to stumble up the stone steps unharmed. Wave after wave swarms into the castle, all heading for Voldemort in the Great Hall.

“For my master, Regulus Black, defender of house-elves!” Kreacher calls as he leads the Hogwarts elves into battle. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy go screaming past, not even trying to fight. 

Hermione and Ron run into Neville and have Fenrir Greyback on the floor in mere moments, so rage-fuelled as they are. Somewhere nearby, Bellatrix shrieks with laughter and more people yell. Hermione whips around to see both Ginny and Luna facing off against her, and sprints towards them in blind panic. She doesn’t even know what she’s throwing at the woman anymore, just that she wants it to _hurt._

A killing curse flies within a foot of Ginny, and Hermione snaps. She barely hears Molly’s battlecry, fighting side by side with her filled with fury. The stones beneath them are growing too hot for comfort and beginning to crack, but Hermione presses closer still. Her scar is clear as day, brilliant white on dark skin beside the cuffs of her rolled up sleeves, and her hair drifts in a dangerous, slightly singed halo around her head. 

“What will happen to the children when I kill Mummy?” Bellatrix taunts. “What will happen to your precious little friends and lovers, Mongrel?”

“You will never touch our children!” Molly screams.

“You’ll never have me underhand again, you bitch!” 

Bellatrix laughs. She laughs like she did when she killed Harry’s godfather.

Two bright green curses sail beneath her watch and slam full-force into her chest, knocking her off her feet and wiping the smile clean off her face.

Voldemort screams. Kingsley and Professors McGonagall and Slughorn are blasted off their feet, and he turns his wand on Hermione and Molly.

Molly steps in front of her, but in the same instant Harry’s voice rings through the hall. Hermione would not mistake it anywhere. Her heart leaps into her throat.

“PROTEGO!” he shouts, and a huge, glittering shield stretches right around the blast radius Voldemort created for himself.

Harry appears in the next breath, throwing his cloak to the floor at Hermione’s feet. Fresh tears sear her eyes, and she can’t help but grin with glee. Her throat strains with the effort not to sob and hope grows, steadily, throughout those gathered in Hogwarts. She reaches down and grabs the cloak for him, unseen in the clamour that breaks at his appearance.

Spinning through the golden light of new sun, the Elder Wand falls right into the open hand of its true master. Voldemort falls backwards and hits the ground a broken, lifeless, grotesque doll, and silence hangs in the air. 

Hermione and Ron are the first to reach Harry, throwing their arms around him and each other and holding on for dear life, even after everyone has come to join them. Hermione kisses his cheek over and over and cries into his chest. Harry’s tears smear across his face, and Ron wipes them aside and kisses him too. There’s a little gasp and a giggle from Ginny at Hermione’s shoulder, who is very conspicuously trying to kiss Luna and hug Neville at the same time.

They talk to Headmistress McGonagall, celebrate with the Weasleys, and then Hermione decides enough is enough and leads them both by the hand from the hall. Harry takes them to the headmaster’s office, and even she is shocked by the uproar the portraits make from their frames.

“What you left in the snitch for me I dropped in the forest,” Harry tells Dumbledore. “I don’t know where it is, and neither does anyone else, and we won’t be going to look for it.”

Dumbledore nods kindly and agrees.

“I am going to keep Ignotus’ present, though.”

Hermione grins and squeezes his hand. Harry squeezes back, and takes out the Elder Wand.

“If I return this to its resting place and die a peaceful death, the spell will be broken, won’t it?” he asks. Ron gasps, and Hermione squeezes his hand too. _It’s Harry’s choice._

“Yes, my dear boy, it will.”

“Do you approve?” 

“Very much so.”

“Good. I preferred my other wand.” Harry moves towards the headmaster’s desk, so Hermione and Ron go with him. He retrieves the shards of his wand and lays them on the surface. “Reparo,” he casts, and she holds her breath. 

Where Harry traces the Elder Wand, the splinters of holly wood knit themselves together. The sealing wand radiates warmth, and once he reaches the other end it is whole and sparking happily.

Hermione watches Harry pick it up and hold it to his chest.

“Come on,” she murmurs. “I don’t think anyone will be in the common room today.”

Harry turns to grin at her and Ron in turn. “I think you read my mind,” he says, and takes her hand again. He brings it to his lips and leaves a small kiss there. She giggles and pulls them to the door. 

They kiss on the staircase and again in an alcove hiding from Peeves, pretending they’re fifteen again running through Hogwarts after hours. The Fat Lady waves them through with a smile and a “Well done!” without even mentioning a password.

They topple into a familiar sofa, grateful beyond words that everything here is still intact. Hermione takes the sandwiches that appear on the table next to them without a word and hands them out, seeming to demolish one in the time it takes to fix Harry’s glasses (again). She reaches for another, and Ron offers her the plate with a flourish that makes her snort with laughter. Harry sniggers, and Ron joins in, and they end up in a warm, comfortable (dirty) heap in front of the fire. Hermione waves her wand over them to try to clean off at least a bit of the grime. Harry squirms at the sensation, so she kisses him an apology, and her wand ends up forgotten on the table. Ron presses in closely, smiling contentedly at the both of them and threading the fingers of both his hands through theirs.

“Don’t think I didn’t see you,” he says suddenly, and Harry and Hermione break apart. There’s a bark of laughter and a whistle, and Harry, peering over the back of the sofa, goes pink.

“Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan!” Hermione exclaims. “I _will_ tell McGonagall what I found you doing in the cauldron cupboard last year! Or Slughorn!”

There’s a yelp and the pattering of feet up to the boys dormitory, and she snorts.

“What were they doing?” Harry asks.

“You don’t want to know,” she says, and taps his waist playfully. He squeaks.

“Well, if it’s what I think it is, I’d really quite like to try recreating it sometime soon,” Ron murmurs lowly. Harry squeaks again and they laugh. Hermione has not the heart to tell him that they were only rigging random cauldrons to explode, so she sighs and settles back into the sofa. They’ve probably run upstairs to do exactly what he thinks, anyway.

Voldemort is dead, and she has both of her boys in her arms.

Remembering the petals she kept in her jacket, she frees a hand and digs them out. They are just as pristine as ever, and all three watch them wilt just like the rest as she holds them.

“I think we were all a bit silly,” Harry mutters. 

“You don’t say,” Ron agrees. “If we hadn’t resolved it when we had, Hermione and I would probably…”

“But we’re here now,” she interrupts, “and that’s all that matters.”

“Yeah,” Ron smiles. “It does.” 

“I am _never_ letting you out of my sight again,” Harry says, and all of them laugh. 


End file.
